Crisis on Earth X: The Rest of the War
by RagstheMuffin
Summary: Earth X has been living under the terror of the Reich for years before our heroes stumbled into it and fought their way out. This is the story of General Schott, the last general of the Freedom Fighters. While the familiar superheroes save Kara and their alternate earths, Schott faces the enemy without his right-hand men or best weapons, and with very little hope.
1. The Rest of the War Pt 1

**Why this fic:** I wrote this fic for myself and anyone who watched the DC "Crisis" Crossover episodes and went "WHAT THE HECK" when our heroes just abandoned an entire world under the control of actual Nazis. I also wrote it to explain why General Schott is so angry and apparently uncooperative, because I think he deserves a little bit of credit for leading the last stronghold of defiance in a world ruled by hate.

 **Notes:** [a] The first half is complete canon with a little embellishment for set-up and explanatory purposes. The second, longer half, is extra-canon for satisfaction. [b] I am aware that Kara and Alex are not from Earth One, but seeing as no one points this out to the Freedom Fighters in the episode, I don't bring it up either. [c] While I have no idea what Snart will be doing with his new time-traveling buddies, I imagine he'll end up back home at some point for some reason. [d] I started writing this before the release of the animated series about the Ray, so I hold zero accountability for any lack of continuity with that show, or any of the others for that matter. It worked when I wrote it. [e] Lastly, the headings are Fall Out Boy lyrics, because I'm basic.

 **Disclaimer:** I really like General Schott.

 **Length / Further disclaimer:** This ended up waaaay longer than I intended, at just under 20k words. Ha. But it's broken up into shorter bits within the three sections I've posted it in.

 **Warnings:** mild swearing and violence associated with, well, anything that comes to mind when you have Nazis and then go around killing the Nazis. I don't like gore, all descriptive language is mild.

 **The Rest of the War, Pt 1:**

 _ **Bring Home the Boys in Scraps, Scrap Metal the Tanks**_

Thirty-six hours since the Führer had seized the gateway. Twenty-four hours since Leo was sent to find Ray Terrill. Apparently, that was all the time it took for the hell they were all living in to drop to a new level of insane.

"General Schott." One of the rebel technicians, a lieutenant in the ranks, crossed the room from her station to where Schott stood staring at the table spread with scale buildings, outposts, and all the beginnings of strategies he'd already abandoned hours before.

"What is it?" He leveled the tech with a steady gaze, letting her know she had better not be wasting his time.

She held a communication module in her left hand, various readouts scrolling across its busy screen. "Snart has returned, and he has Terrill with him."

Schott dropped his head and exhaled deeply. He hadn't been worried, or he hadn't thought he was worried – Leo was an intelligent fighter, if also a complete, raving lunatic, and could hold his own. Still, Schott ordered him to rescue Ray only because he knew if he didn't, Leo would have gone anyway and done something incredibly stupid. It was a relief, in either case, to know that at least one small mission was a success. Small victories were a precious reward of late and he would take every one that came.

"Something more, sir," the lieutenant pressed. Schott focused on her again. "He brought back others too, claiming they're from another earth – that they came through the gateway – and I've never seen the like of them before. Like Ray, but…different."

Schott frowned. "What? Who?" What had Leo done? One mission, one simple get in and get out, and he'd gone and made it complicated, and who knew what consequences this could have. "Are they already in the tower?" he asked, moving away from the table.

"They're on their way up now," she said. "We don't know who they are, only that they were rescued with Terrill. Except, sir." She hesitated. He knew that tone, he'd heard it for years: she was about to tell him something he wouldn't like. "One of them… it's _not_ him, but it looks like… he looks like the Führer, General. He could be his twin."

Schott clenched his hands into fists the moment the title 'Führer' had left her lips. It took a concentrated effort to relax them again. He cleared his throat and when he spoke again, his voice was dangerously low. "Looks like? _Looks like_ , and you just let them pass through?"

The woman had the grace to look nervous now, her eyes touching everything in the room before meeting his own. "Snart vouched for him, says he's a double. From… from another earth, sir."

Schott blinked at her. "Another earth," he repeated.

She shifted her feet. "Yes, sir."

"Back to your station, lieutenant." The order sounded like a rebuke.

"Sir." She spun around and beat a hasty retreat, probably regretting the choice to be the one to tell him his men were returning with the twin of the one person he most wanted dead.

"Lieutenant!" he called after her, stopping her. She looked back and Schott swallowed, his jaw tight around the next words he spoke. "Is there any news of James?"

She shook her head slowly. "Nothing, sir. It is difficult to…" The woman gathered herself and her self-respect on the heels of his dismissal. "It is difficult to ascertain exactly how the Nazis took the gateway, and we have only recovered a few of the fighters who were with Guardian when they lost the compound. There has been no sign of him."

"No body, you mean." A fool's hope was still hope, and he had always been the fool.

"No, sir."

If he lost James, he lost his right hand. Their fight might never recover, not now that the enemy also held the gateway. As soon as the enemy understood the mechanism and how to control it… their reach would extend past any and every border, and he wouldn't be able to stop them.

"Sir, about Guardian… I'm–"

"Go." He cut her off before the word 'sorry' could betray the truth they all feared. She stammered something and he waved his arm at her. " _Go_."

He turned back to the table and its hopeless array of obstacles and reminders of death. It was time for a contingency plan: he was without his friend, his brother. It was time to make the Führer lose something too.

The temporal gateway had been the first true chance of ending the war they had seen in years. Not even the general whose shoes Schott now filled had been able to come so close. If they could truly make it work, then they could travel to another world, another universe. They could escape, closing the door behind them so that the Reich could never follow. They would live again, smile again. They would stand in the open and look to the sky with no fear of being seen, no fear of the enemy dropping from the clouds to slaughter them, no fear of capture and torture and death.

Freedom.

He had clung to that for what felt like a lifetime. Among their ranks were only a handful of scientists capable of understanding the theories of a hypothetical machine that would breach the cloth of their world and allow them to step into a new one. And by the time they got close, the Führer found out. It was hard to hide a machine that was capable of ripping through a piece of the universe. And now that the Reich had it, with their dozens of physicists and specialists… the Resistance had already done half the work, and now the Reich would finish it. Instead of being the source of freedom and escape, now the Nazi regime could spread.

Worse, they could take their terrible Weapon, the thing the Resistance only heard whispers of, and send it anywhere they pleased. Everything, and everyone would die, until only the Reich remained.

He wasn't going to let that happen, no matter how much it cost, and no matter if he was the last one standing against the Führer.

The Resistance had almost failed at the fall of the last general.

General Schott had no plans of falling now.

Forty hours since he had last spoken to James and approximately ten minutes after he made the decision they all knew he was going to make, Schott heard the voices of new conversation in the tower base. He didn't want to join them, didn't want to see the face that matched that of the Führer and hold himself back from shooting the man then and there, doppelganger or not, but he could see the eyes of his fighters flickering to him as the gang of newcomers made their way to the center of the room, and he felt their uncertainty. They were on the verge of breaking every day, they needed to know he wasn't giving up.

The appearance of these strangers did not change what he had to do, what he had known he would do the minute news reached him that the Führer, his wife, and Thawne had all gone through the portal. He'd held back, he couldn't stomach the idea of destroying what they had worked so hard to build, but the choice had been made for him. The strangers could choose to help, or he would have them safely tucked away until it was done.

Schott made his way from the edge of the tower room toward the center, where he could see the motley crew walking in, pausing to discuss something. Leo and Ray appeared uninjured, as did the rest. Another small mercy.

The group was animated, arguing. They were talking about the gateway.

Of course they were.

It wasn't hard to connect the dots. The facility was taken, the temporal gateway confiscated, and now strangers claiming to be from another world – like Ray, like the Führer's Thawne – showed up in the Führer's prison camp. They had come from somewhere else, maybe from Ray's Earth One, maybe from wherever it was that the Führer had gone. They had powers, if the lieutenant's impression was correct, and looking at their strange and colored uniforms, that was easy enough to believe.

They wanted the portal. They wanted to go home.

 _Too late for that,_ Schott thought, coming up behind them. Far too late.

They still saw the gateway as something good, something worth fighting to save, because they didn't know what the fighters did: that everything the Führer touched was already destroyed.

The argument was escalating, with the strangers rebelling against Ray and Leo, even though the latter was looking sympathetic. Schott had to kill their idea before it took any deeper root.

"Look," one man in red was saying to Leo. "It's our only way home. We're _going_ through it." He stated it like a fact, like he thought he was in charge.

"Nobody's going through anything," Schott announced, interrupting the debate. All eyes in the group fell on him. "Because we're blowing it the hell up."

The woman in tactical gear looked shocked, a light of recognition in her wide eyes. " _Winn_?!"

Schott bristled at the familiarity, and at how she could possibly know his name when he had never seen her in his life. A very select group of people were allowed to call him by his first name, and this woman did not make the list.

Leo jumped to correct her, sliding over to stand by Schott. Ray joined them as well, and Schott felt a slight comfort in having the two men at his side again. " _Please_ ," Leo said in the deliberate, sliding tone he often employed to make his point to a particularly slow listener. "Freedom Fighter General Schott." There was altogether too much pride in the way he announced Schott's title, as if it somehow held honor.

The correction only made the woman's eyebrows leap higher up her forehead. " _General_ Schott?"

He was not in the mood for these games. "Yeah, and who are you?" he demanded.

Leo answered for her, earning himself a glare, but that didn't stop him. "Friends, from Earth One."

"They're on our side," Ray added.

"Except for the part where you guys want to blow up our only way home," another of the strangers said.

Schott considered him. He was the youngest of the entire group, barely more than a kid, and beneath the bluster of indignation, he looked scared. Schott took them all in, except for one man in the back whose face Schott refused to acknowledge for the moment. He needed to focus. They couldn't have the gateway, and he was wasting time.

"We don't exactly _want_ to," Leo pointed out thoughtfully. Schott cast him a look. This wasn't helping.

The man in red, a bright bolt of lightning emblazoned on his chest, had been the one to declare their intentions of going through and he wasn't ready to back down. He held himself like a leader, which Schott could respect, but this man had no authority here. "Everybody we care about is on the other side of that gateway," he explained. "Imprisoned by Nazis."

There was some comfort hearing that the promised escape they could have had was not a perfect one, if the Führer's men could take control of this other earth so easily. It made what he had to do easier.

"They're Nazis that want to cut open my sister," the first woman said. Her eyes were pleading with him. He returned her gaze with nothing showing in his own. "We _have_ to get back."

The oldest of the group, a white-haired and bespectacled man who looked more like a scientist than a soldier, became agitated. "Eliminate that facility and you eliminate our only chance of saving our friends from _your_ enemies!"

Schott stopped them, one hand out, placating. His rebuttal, however, was anything but gentle. "I'm sorry, but we have been waiting for an opportunity like this for years, we cannot wait any longer." This last part he directed at Leo, who seemed so very inclined to agree with the strangers. "This is our _only_ chance to separate the Führer from his army," he continued forcefully. "We are trying to turn this war around!"

The one man in the room who Schott had done his best to ignore from the start, broke through the invisible barrier Schott had erected between them, stepping forward and aiming angry words in his direction, matching Schott's raised voice. "You are going to leave our earth at the mercy of the three psychopaths who have ravaged yours!"

The man's face was undeniably familiar, the same features, the same eyes. He even wore the apparel of an archer. Schott's stomach twisted in his gut. Hatred for that face rising like bile and leaving a hot and bitter taste in his mouth. Memories, images of faces – his parents, his general, and his Lyra – came unbidden and he was unprepared for the emptiness and rage they summoned. And the fear. He couldn't concentrate on the argument with the Führer's exact face mere feet from him. One bullet from the gun at his hip, and this man would be dead. Schott's fingers itched to pull the trigger. His hands trembled with all the violent things they wanted to do.

When he managed to speak, less than a second had passed, but it felt like he had been staring at the man in silence for an eternity, and he couldn't keep the cold hate from underscoring his words, even as he kept their volume low. "Ray, why does this man look exactly like the Führer I am trying to kill?"

Ray knew how the other universe worked. Schott didn't. Were there doubles of all of them? Or had this man been designed only to torment them with his presence like his counterpart did with his war?

"Look, Fingerless Gloves," the woman dressed in white said. Schott felt the jab take away the immediate wrath he felt towards the Führer's double, and only just stopped himself from pointing out the severe impracticality of her own rather revealing and now-filthy outfit. Some, like her, dressed to show off while others, like the Freedom Fighters, dressed to hide - his gloves could at least cover some of this war's scars. "All we are asking is for a little bit of time. Let us get into the facility and through that gateway."

"The gateway is guarded by 30 Panzer XIIs, 50 Sturmtigers, and 100 Schutzstaffel officers," Leo rattled off. He wasn't taking sides again yet, but it was a good point to make. "Not the best odds, maybe."

 _Not for this strange crew_ , Schott thought.

"I'll take them." The woman who wanted to save her sister had hardly looked away from Schott since he walked up and he focused back on her now. She looked fragile enough to break, and sharp enough to pierce. They all had the appearance of fighters, but she was the one who looked the most like a soldier.

She was also, clearly, insane.

"No!" he insisted, shaking his head. "You will not." How did she not understand that what was at stake was so much bigger than one person? Or a dozen or even a hundred? He was tired of this argument, and they were wasting precious time. Who knew when the Führer might return, whether he would bring the weapon back to destroy them once and for all, or surprise them with some new unspeakable evil.

He turned to Leo and Ray. It didn't matter what these strangers wanted, or how sympathetic Leo was to them; his men had to follow his command.

"We are blowing up that gateway, _right now_. Final order."

He left them before another argument could be raised.

Forty-one hours since his last communication with James, thirty minutes after he had given his command to Leo and Ray, and twenty minutes after the technicians had begun preparing his best bet at destroying the gateway, the woman who was both soldier and sister found him once again standing over the table of his strategy board. Alex, they had told him her name was.

It didn't take a genius to surmise why she wanted to talk to him. He didn't want to argue; didn't want to tell them he couldn't afford them their own hopes. His world mattered more than the life of one person, and it always would.

"You don't seem to know how to take an order." There was a weariness in him he could feel weighing on his shoulders, seeping into his bones.

"That's because I'm used to giving them," she explained. "You can't do this, Winn."

There it was again. _Winn_. He rounded on her angrily, correcting her. "General. Schott!" Winn did not exist here, not anymore.

Alex looked taken aback, but she didn't back down.

He didn't know her. She didn't know him, and he was not about to let her pretend like she did. "Look I don't know who the hell you think you are, but this planet has been at war for generations. We are _tired_ ," he spat the last word like a curse. "There are men dying for the same causes their grandfathers did." His right arm gestured behind him at the empty room, as if he could conjure the ghosts of all the people who had fought and died before him. Still, her expression remained unchanged, she couldn't understand, and he gave a disgusted sigh before moving away.

The Red Tornado would be ready soon. He had been saving the drone for a while, using it to help in reconnaissance or air support, but always with protection. It was a powerful weapon, and one that, before now, he didn't think they could afford to lose. As soon as the techs gave him the word, the Tornado would be launched at the portal and the Führer would be trapped a long, long distance away.

Alex hadn't left. She followed him around the table. "We're not asking you to surrender," she pleaded. "Just let us get back home before you destroy that thing!"

He didn't answer. She wouldn't listen.

Alex persisted. "I'm just asking for a little time."

That was enough. He was done arguing. "Time is what I can't give you!"

She still somehow looked surprised. Almost sad, even. Whoever this Winn was on her earth, he must be a very different person. Maybe generations of war hadn't eaten away at the man from her side, leaving only a uniform and a bullet-laced heart that continued to bleed.

For the sake of the Winn she knew, and the man he might have been if he had been given any other path, Schott gave her one last chance to see what he saw, to know why he had to destroy what had once been their greatest hope. "They have a weapon," he said. "A doomsday weapon. Powerful enough to affect other worlds." _Yours_ , he thought. _And mine_. "It _has_ to be eliminated."

"Winn." Alex said, and she grabbed his arm. His whole body stiffened instantly and he forced out a long exhale, restraining himself from jerking away from her. No one touched him, no one dared. No one had been so comfortable, or comforting, around him – not since Lyra.

"Please," she said. "The Führer on your earth, the people that you hate, they are going to kill my sister if you don't let me get back to save her."

There would be no reasoning with her. He would have her locked up until this was over if necessary. While her sister, her family, was in jeopardy, nothing else would seem to matter; and while he didn't blame her, it made her a risk.

"On my earth," she continued, "my sister is your closest friend. She's saved you countless times. You would do anything to help her."

He _had_ done anything, and everything, to help the people he loved. So far, none of it had mattered. Their faces were always in front of his eyes, the weight of their presence filling every room he walked into. He couldn't listen to Alex as she stood next to him, begging for someone else's life, another life he could not save, when the echoes of all he used to know were still a deafening ring in his ears.

"You would do anything to help each other," Alex insisted. "No matter the risk, and _without_ question." Her desperation thundered in every word, both alien and all too familiar. "So. All I'm asking for is a chance."

Alex reached for his arm again and this time he did pull away from her, but it was more of a withdraw than a recoil. "Please," she whispered.

"I am sorry about your sister," Schott told her softly, earnestly, hoping she could see he meant that. "And about your earth. I truly am. But today I have the chance to protect _my_ people, _my_ earth." He checked her eyes for any sign of comprehension, of knowing the magnitude of the choices he made every day. All he saw was her pain. "My decision stands."

"Winn," she called after him as he walked away.

But he was not her Winn, and he did not break his stride.

The Red Tornado would be ready or nearly so. He left her at his table of failed strategy and discarded hopes. He had a war to finish.

He stepped into the elevator and felt himself deflate as the doors closed him off from the room at the top of the tower. Rubbing a hand over his face, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Alex needed to get out of his head. There was no way in this or any universe that he would stop a war to save someone's lost sister – except, apparently, the universe this sister belonged to – but that didn't stop her pleas from affecting him. It wasn't that he was apathetic to her cause, just that he felt too strongly about his own.

His earth, he had said. _His_ people. Even if no one else claimed them, he would.

When he stepped out of the elevator into the weaponry, he saw one of the communication officers standing at the edge of the room and waved them to him.

"General."

"Do we have any word yet from Guardian?" he asked.

The officer didn't even have to check the logs before he was already shaking his head. "The recovery troops are working slowly. They are bringing bodies back as they can, but most are inside the facility compound. The soldiers of the Reich have either gotten rid of them, or…" The officer shook his head. The man had large dark circles under his eyes, and the whites around his pupils were bloodshot. It was, again, somehow comforting to know that Schott wasn't the only one not sleeping. "Or, they might be keeping them as trophies."

Schott swallowed against the acrid taste that had been lingering in his mouth and nodded once. They should have heard something from James by now, but the lack of a body, and the lack of the Reich sending missives to lord over their triumph, still gave him reason to believe his friend could have survived. If anyone could, it was James.

"Let the fighters outside know we are preparing to launch."

"Sir." The officer nodded back and turned, already talking and typing through the command modules and communications.

Schott moved his attention to the metal figure standing in the center of the room, surrounded by technicians and fighters.

The Red Tornado they called it, and despite its age and how it was a little worse for wear, the gleam of its eyes still held fire. Schott had been told he liked collecting dangerous things from a young age. His father believed it was because he had been a small and frankly sickly child, terrified of the chaos around him, and had drawn upon other things as protection from the offensive world he had been born into. From slingshots and stones and firecrackers, a young Schott had graduated to guns, knives, and armor. His father worked in a factory that made weapons, before he fell out of standing with the Reich, and he occasionally brought home some new device to show a wide-eyed, fierce little boy.

That boy had grown into a soldier, and the weapons had grown with him. The drone before him now was the third best weapon in his arsenal, and he counted Leo Snart and Ray Terrill as the first two. James was also a weapon, the difference being that Schott valued his friendship and head for strategy over his skills in a fight.

But the picture here was wrong.

"Why has it not been moved outside yet?" he demanded of the room, quickly covering the distance between the elevator and the drone in quick strides. Schott was not an intimidating figure by size, he was smaller than most of his men. But he had been told more than once that his presence made most uncomfortable. Unwavering, a fixated stare, head up and brow low – there was never a question of who was in charge.

"General," Leo Snart's voice came from behind the Tornado. Ray stepped out from behind Leo, looking, for lack of a better word, sheepish.

Schott stopped in front of the drone and set his weight back on his heels, folding his arms over his chest. This would be good.

"We have a war to win," Leo said, starting off well. "But… so do they."

"They have _one_ girl to save," Schott retorted. "A girl who matters absolutely nothing to any person on this planet, or at least not any who belong here."

"Oh, that's harsh," Leo winced. He cast a significant look at Ray.

Schott waved at the fighters around him to stop being an audience to the dispute and get back to their work. They could finish sending the Tornado outside to be launched while he argued his own men back into place. "Ray, you know that you are welcome here. You're a part of this world for however long you stay on it and after. But if Leo hadn't come for you, if I hadn't sent him, you would understand why."

Ray nodded. "Of course, but we–"

"I don't remember this being a question up for debate." His words were pointed. Ray looked chagrined, but Leo was the obstinate of the two. He was the only person Schott knew who matched his own stubbornness. "I am _not_ sacrificing the one solid move we have left, for one stranger who got herself caught in the crossfire!"

"You don't even know who the girl is," Leo said.

Schott's eyebrows rose. Among all their ranks, it was Leo Snart's complete incorrigible audacity that was also the only thing capable of making Schott laugh, but those qualities were giving him a headache now. He put on a thin smile that did not even begin to reach his eyes. "Enlighten me."

"She's not just a random person, she's a hero on her earth. She is as powerful as the Führer's wife. If they lose her, they lose a great protector. If we help save her, we may gain a formidable ally. She protects her earth the same way we fight for ours."

"There was someone as powerful as her here, remember," Schott spat. "And I do not recall that timid journalist doing anything to help when we went asking." On the contrary, the distant cousin of the enemy general had taken his payout from the Führer and disappeared. Hiding, or taken out by his cousin as collateral, Schott neither knew or particularly cared.

"General, they just need a little time," Leo said, changing tact. "We've held out this long, we can hold out a little longer. Allow them the chance to save the people they love, save their own world. Do you think the Führer won't hurt them if we strand him on their side, and leave the only ones who know why stranded on ours?

Schott gritted his teeth. "You should _not_ have delayed the Tornado's launch. The Führer could return at any second." Pent-up energy led him to pace a few short steps, a small circle bringing him back to face them. One hand remained at his side, always near his gun, while the other gestured in Leo's direction. "He could activate his weapon _whenever_ he wants, Leo. And the only reason we're still alive to have this conversation is because he's distracted on some other planet." He shook his head, bowing it, voice lowered. Did they think he liked the choice he made? "We destroy the portal to their earth, we save ours."

"Can you live with that?" Leo asked.

Schott looked up at him sharply. "Excuse me?"

Ray even put a hand up to stop him, but the expression in Leo's icy eyes was fierce, and he ignored them both. "We've done a lot here," Leo continued. "We have fought, and we have killed, and we have lost. Some of us have been lucky enough to find some light still in this world. And some of us… some of us have lived long enough to see those lights snuffed out."

Ray wouldn't hold Schott's gaze, though Leo never broke contact.

They knew. Of all the men who stood with the Freedom Fighters, these two knew. They had been told about his parents: a German father, a Jewish mother, gone when his father ceased being useful to the Reich and their marriage was discovered. Leo had been there when the previous general, the man who had in large part raised Schott, had been taken by the Sturmbannführer, Lance. Ray and Leo both had stood in the tower as the face of the Führer filled the communication screen, transmitting a feed from the Nazi camp a few miles away: Lyra held before him like some prize, the terror in her eyes matched only by the venom she still fought against him with... even as he brought the gun to her head.

Schott turned his back to his men, stepped away, and placed his palms on the edge of a control console, supporting a weight that was suddenly far heavier than his own. It didn't matter to him that they knew about the crack Leo's words had just opened, but he would rather they didn't see it openly displayed on his face. By the time Leo and Ray joined him, one on either side, his expression was carefully composed. Hard obstinance covered the crack.

"We have lost so much," Ray said, far more softly than Leo. He had always been able to tell when the ghosts were at their closest. "This entire world that we are protecting? I don't know how much of it is left to be saved. But their world? They are free on their world. General, they won the war that we are fighting."

" _You_ won the war," Schott cut in. "On _your_ world."

Ray acknowledged this with a nod. "This isn't about that. Earth One isn't my home any more than here. If we help them, if they succeed… isn't that important too, isn't protecting what is still there to be saved just as important as avenging what is lost?"

Schott knew what he would give to have back the people he had lost – anything. Would he give the victory, the entire war, for just a moment longer with his parents, with his mentor, with his love? He didn't know, he couldn't see that, he could only see the void they left and the war that filled it.

"You know what the fighters are saying," Leo said. "What the mothers whisper to their children when they think no one is listening." He set his shoulders, forcing a stoic, carefree front, the way he always did when he was actually experiencing emotion. "They say we died a long time ago, and that this is just what comes after. You keep trying to give them hope, we do too, but then these strangers – these people who _have_ hope – arrive, and you're just going to ignore them? They _are_ hope, General. It's possible that their salvation can be ours."

Alex's words, begging him to allow her to rescue her sister, telling him he was connected to them in some other reality, met all of Leo's arguments now. Whoever it was he had turned into, he didn't like the damaged goods he saw. Because the truth remained that they _could not_ take the risk. However, he also couldn't afford to continue standing here arguing with Leo until he won or the cold man went off and did something incredibly stupid with that ice gun of his. He wished, not for the first time, that he could ask the advice of the general who had gone before him.

Schott sighed. "I cannot give up this chance for the possibility that saving them could help us, or believe that somehow it could redeem what we've done to get us this far," he told his two men quietly, shooting stern glares at both of them. "I won't."

Leo's face tightened into sharpness, and Ray's shoulders slumped.

"But." Schott waved at the same communication officer he had spoken to before, who had assisted in finally removing the Red Tornado from the room, and the fighter joined them with a questioning look. "I can give you an hour."

Leo's thin lips spread into a smile.

"That's _all_ ," Schott added tersely. He was making a mistake. But somewhere, on some other earth, was someone else who still had family and friends, and nights of laughter, and relaxation, and sleep without nightmares. And maybe, he supposed, maybe that was worth protecting too. "That is all I can give."

He turned to the communication officer. "Get me the Commander on the launch pad, now. And inform the armory sergeant that our guests are welcome to the armory. Whatever they need, they can take." He nodded to Leo. "I'll leave that to your discretion."

Leo immediately fell back into his cocksure, charismatic self, now that he had won. "Yes, sir!" he said, singing the last consonant.

As the officer handed a dialed radio to Schott and then rushed off to talk to the armory sergeant, Leo trailing behind like the chaotic snow drift he was, Ray paused. He opened his mouth to speak, but something about Schott's face must have changed his mind. So he merely said "thank you" and followed Leo out into the hall.

Schott watched them leave, the radio held in his hand.

This was wrong.

This was a mistake.

But maybe, for once, it was the right mistake.

He pressed the button pad on the radio and closed his eyes. "Commander," he said.

The radio squawked once. "Yes, General Schott."

"Commander, you are to postpone the Red Tornado's launch until further instructed, and only if those instructions come from me. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

Schott tossed the radio onto the console, cast one look at the place in the center of the room where the Red Tornado had stood for months, waiting this opportunity, and shook his head.

Leo poked his head around the door frame. "Oh, General? We shall require the use of your strategy board."

The group of strangers gathered round Schott's board on Leo's invitation, the man who was the doppelganger to the Führer taking lead. Schott did not join them, but remained on the edge of the room, arms folded across his chest, his brow deeply knotted into a familiar frown.

The archer's name was Oliver, and though Schott's attention flickered to the rest of the motley group in turn as they plotted, it was Oliver's presence that compelled him to stay. He couldn't bring himself to stand at the table and help them plan their own demise, but neither could he be elsewhere and convince himself that the Führer's look alike was not murdering his men in their own base while he wasn't in the room.

There was still no word of James, and whispers about the decision to delay the Red Tornado were passing through the ranks.

The plan they came up with was a poor one, but he'd heard worse. Oliver would pretend to be the Führer whose face he shared, and Leo would talk their way in. That much at least made sense. From the inside, Oliver could access the control panel. All he had to do was shut down the device that dampened their powers, and the rest could join him, holding off the enemy long enough to get through the portal back home. Schott would hold off for one hour before he sent the Red Tornado to destroy the gateway, cutting off the connection to Earth One, and at that point the other world's heroes would be on their own. If Oliver could play the Führer successfully for a few minutes, the plan had a low percentage of actually working.

Oliver looked across the room to Schott as everyone dispersed to prepare themselves, and Schott's teeth gritted together as he faced the doppelganger. "Your men want to help," Oliver said. "But we'll make sure they can come back."

"Your friend may be important to you and your earth," Schott said, "but my men are just as important here. They are _needed_ here." He cocked his head. "So yeah, you had better."

"We have the ability to open breaches from Earth One," the man in red, Barry, explained. "Just not here."

"Your plan is ludicrous," Schott told them.

Barry nodded with a sort of sideways shrug. "We know. We've had better ones."

Schott gestured at the far side of the room. "Time is wasting. Get to it."

Barry flashed a smile. "Good luck to you, too."

"We won't forget this," Oliver added. He nodded at the room. "The Earth where the Nazis never fell. I promise you, we'll come back, and we'll help you save your earth."

Schott looked at him, tried to really look, to see past the murderer he knew. He wasn't sure what he saw looking back at him. A hero? A villain? Or someone a little more like himself: part noble, part killer, always losing and always lost. He also wondered if the man was in the habit of making promises he had no ability to keep. "I won't hold my breath."

Barry put a hand up as if he were a child asking a question, the same perplexed question mark on his face as the one he had when Schott first met him and his friends in the tower. Rather than ask a question however, all he said was, "You're… different."

Schott blinked at him. He must know the other one, Alex's Winn. "Welcome to Earth X."

Leaving them to their preparations, Schott fell into step with Ray and Alex as they crossed the room to gear up themselves.

"I am allowing this mission," he reminded them curtly, "against my better judgement. He stopped, forcing them to stop with him, and faced them deliberately. "You have _one_ hour."

Alex almost reached for his arm, then reconsidered. "I appreciate it. We all do." Her eyes searched his one more time for any sign of the friend she knew from her world. Finding nothing, she continued across the room to rejoin her team as Leo outfitted them from the armory.

Letting her go, Schott turned to Ray who stopped him before he could speak. "I know. I know what you're thinking."

Schott didn't think he did. Leo and Ray were two of his greatest assets and most trusted allies, but they had disobeyed and interfered with his orders, and right then they should expect no welcome or encouragement from him after their insubordination. He spoke slowly, as though to a child, except that his words were laced with all the warning of a wolf's growl. "If you don't make it through the gateway, I am not giving you more time. I will blow that place to kingdom come."

If Ray was looking for reassurance, or some sort of farewell, he had stumbled into the wrong war zone.

Schott went to the radio that was set up next to the main console from his control room in the tour. He matched the dial to the frequency used earlier. "Commander."

A beat, and then the radio clicked on from the other side. "General."

"We will be launching the Tornado. One hour – set your watch."

Approximately eighty hours since the last time Schott remembered lying down to sleep, and half an hour into the Earth One group's mission, one of the camps of the Reich hailed their communications, and General Schott ordered all their defenses online before answering the call.

The last time the Reich had lowered themselves to communicate with the Freedom Fighters like this, the video had turned on to show the Führer with his prized prisoner: the woman his enemy loved, executed without ceremony, while the Resistance General watched. The Reich expected such a personal attack to strike a heavy blow to the Fighters, and they had been right. Schott was in no way prepared for what they were going to show him now. Had they captured the mission team before they even infiltrated the facility?

When the projection materialized onscreen, his shoulders dropped in immediate relief. This was not the face of a Nazi, and it wasn't an attack.

"Catherine," he said as the image came into focus. A woman with sharp blue eyes and perfectly coiffed blonde hair, she was the epitome of what the Führer wanted the world to look like, but she was the opposite of everything they stood for.

"Hello, Winslow." Her voice was distorted by distance and by the various methods they were both using to scramble and hide the transmission, and the room behind her was dark and indistinct, but it was Catherine Jane Grant, and the only person allowed to use his full first name – "allowed" being a generous term. "I'm afraid I have news." Her tone was curt, businesslike, but he had known her for years, and he recognized the notes of unease even through the video.

Activity around the room still went on, but it was subdued, as the fighters' eyes kept drifting to the screen. They knew of Catherine, the woman who had infiltrated the Nazi ranks and worked from within the Reich to bring it down, and their curiosity and admiration was getting the better of them.

Catherine, from miles away, met his eye. "I know you've been seeking out the status of your friend Guardian since the gateway was taken."

Schott held up a hand to stop her, looking away, all the relief he had felt a minute ago now flooding out of his body. "No."

"Winslow," she said, not unkindly, but firmly. "James Olsen is dead."

Schott pounded his hands on the console as a wordless roar leaped from his throat. His hands retracted into fists as he leaned forward into them, head dropped between his shoulders, eyes closed, teeth bared. In the sudden silence that followed, he could hear the heaviness of his own breaths.

No one else in the room dared move.

The crack that had been splitting open for years was open again, and all the rage and terror and pain of his short life was a darkness inside, yawning like an open grave. It waited for him every day. Today one more ghost would go to rest before him, one more memory he couldn't touch. His parents. His love. His general. His friend. And he was exhausted – he was tired of covering it over while it was pulling him apart.

So he wouldn't. He wouldn't hide it anymore, he would let it stay open. A constant wound, and he would fill it with war until either the war was gone or it finally pulled him in after it.

Straightening, Schott blinked and fought to regain control. Fierce and hard, that was what the war had made him, and that was what he would be. He would be fierce and hard, but all he felt now was cold. "How?" he asked.

"My source tells me he was the last one standing when the Dark Archer took your facility," Catherine said. Her piercing eyes must have never left him. "He faced the Führer alone, and he lost."

He faced the Führer alone. James should never have been alone in that fight. While he stood at the front and fought, while he bled out on the battlefield, Schott had been standing in this very room, only a few miles away. He was giving orders and making plans and _staying put_ while he let his friends die on the ground.

But it had been James who told him to stay. Every time, for years, ever since he had become the Freedom Fighters' General. "An army is just a bunch of angry men without a leader," James had said with a smile. James believed that had been the fault of their own commander: he had gone into battle with his men, and he had been lost. "They need you," James told him every time. And he would give a mock salute. They were brothers, there was no rank between them, and in all this time, Schott had never disobeyed that order. He commanded from the rear, where the view was sharp, distancing himself to keep in control, and to keep them all going.

"James was a good man," Catherine continued now. "I know he was invaluable to you, but you have other soldiers who can fill your ranks. It's time to gather your forces and strike back, Winslow."

"General!"

One of the technicians broke their collective silence, interrupting Catherine.

"What is it?" Schott snapped.

"Sir, a ship has just materialized over the gateway," the technician said, pointing at his readout of information from the facility.

"A ship," Schott repeated, feeling cold.

An image feed from nearby the facility halved the screen where Catherine had materialized. There was indeed a ship, a massive vessel, hovering over the facility, thousands of feet in the air, a battleship unlike anything Schott had ever seen.

Catherine had switched to monitoring the facility as well, and now she gasped. It was a sound of recognition and horror.

Schott couldn't take his eyes off the screen.

"The doomsday weapon," he whispered.

So it was true, and this was how the Resistance died. There was no time for him to send the Red Tornado now, no time to shoot the weapon out of the sky.

"Sir, the gateway also has an increase in energy output," another fighter announced.

Schott nodded. That was their plan, then. The Führer wasn't attacking his own world, not yet. Schott thought of Lyra, a refugee from a dead planet. And his former commander, escaping a world ruled by similar powers as the ones that were breaking theirs. The Führer was sending out his destroyer to any world he chose. Why waste it on one he considered already vanquished?

The red beam of the gateway broke free from the prison of the facility walls, and lit up the sky, temporarily blinding the camera feed. Schott's eyes went to the smaller readout, the one measuring the energy from the distant gateway. He watched the power of it surge and then release. The ship was gone: vanished to somewhere else, far away.

He felt the cracks in him shift, and the darkness settled.

He started barking commands.

"You," Schott ordered, pointing at the communication officer who had first told him Leo and Ray were returning. "Get me Leo on the comms. _Now!_ " The woman, white-faced, did as she was told. "And you," he said to another technician. "Give me your radio."

"Winslow, what are you doing?" Catherine asked. She was clearly shaken, but somehow still poised.

He motioned at someone to end the call. "Striking back," he said as the call was cut off.

On the radio, Schott called up the commander at the launch. "Launch it," he commanded.

The fighters in the room with him looked stunned. "But the mission, Snart and Terrill…" one man interjected.

"Quiet!" Schott yelled at him. He spun to the computer where the female technician was working, and saw her connect to Leo's communicator line, opening it so that Schott could command from where he stood.

"Leo!" he said as soon as she gave him a signal. " _Pull out._ Pull everyone out and get out of there. The Red Tornado is in route to you."

"What do you mean?!" Leo protested. "Call it back!"

"Too late," Schott retorted. He could see the drone's launch as it blasted away from the base. His most prized possession, and it was racing toward the last of his friends. He couldn't stop it, and he knew right then that even if he could, he wouldn't. "It's been programmed. There's no changing course now."

"You said we'd have an hour!"

 _James is dead,_ he wanted to say. _We're all that's left. I'm going to kill the Führer. I've seen the weapon. I'm afraid that we've already lost._ He couldn't say any of those things. He had a roomful of fighters watching him. He still had a people to lead.

"Yeah, well, I changed my mind," he said in place of those things, quietly enough he wondered if Leo even heard him.

Leo was yelling, spluttering. "The team hasn't made it through the breach yet!"

That was it, that broke his calm. Leo had completely lost sight of what it was they had at stake. Schott never could. He whirled around, his feet carrying him in a circle at the center of the room as if the movement was all that was keeping him from exploding.

"That team has nothing to do with us!" he shouted back. "Or saving our planet! And everyone who _can_ threaten it is on the other side of that breach!" With every word, his intensity heightened, until he was shaking his fist at a room full of fighters and ghosts, spitting out each word like a bullet. " _They are not coming back through!_ "

"General!" Leo shouted back

"Leo, _enough_!" he ground out, coming to the communicator's base, grabbing the microphone in his hand like he could make Leo finally hear him if he just got close enough. "I am not risking any more time," he spat. "We are blowing it up."

He punched off the communication before Leo had a chance to reply.

When he turned around, the soldiers in the room were all watching him. He threw his arms wide. "What the hell are you all standing around for?!" he shouted at them. "Mobilize the Fourth Troops, send a guard platoon to meet the mission team on the way back and make sure they get in safely. Where is the Tornado?"

As he barked demands, the fighters flew into their jobs, acting and reacting with all the training he and his officers had been able to give them. A grief-stricken General they didn't understand, but an enraged General was something he had not hidden from them before.

"The Tornado is halfway to the gateway, sir," someone told him.

This was it. This was truly it. The Tornado would strike the gateway, it would destroy the transportation beam and trap the Führer, his wife, Thawne, and their weapon, on a world no one had a way to access otherwise. Their army would be in chaos, and the Freedom Fighters might finally have a chance.

"Sir, there's a problem," a technician announced, concerned. "The Tornado, it's altered course."

Schott's gut twisted.

"Something is interfering with it. Not the controls, the drone is combating some sort of resistance."

"Find out what," he ordered.

"Yes sir, I—" the man stopped.

An alert light was flashing at his station.

"General, the Tornado…it's…"

"It's _what_ , exactly?"

The man was shaking his head in disbelief. "It's gone, sir. Offline. It didn't detonate."

Schott checked the readout for himself, lips pulled tightly back over his teeth, eyes flickering quickly from screen to screen. "That's not possible," he said, quietly at first. "That is not possible!" he shouted at the room, bringing his arms up behind his head to scrape both hands back over his scalp. "Find out what happened! What went wrong!"

But he remembered standing by the table as Ray and Leo and the group of strangers made plans, and Barry had blurred out of the room for a split second before returning. Like Thawne. He could easily have run fast enough to stop the Tornado, though he would have needed more than speed to take the drone off course.

The Red Tornado was down, the only thing he had in his possession that was powerful enough to affect the gateway.

The Führer could return, there was nothing to stop him now from reappearing along with his wife and Thawne and the weapon they would use to conquer every world their gateway could touch.

He had watched as the Führer took everything from him. Took Lyra from him. He had watched while James geared up and left to check in with the troops at the facility. And he had watched as the strangers from another universe and his own men had disobeyed his orders. His General, his Lyra, and his friend were gone, he didn't have to listen to them anymore.

"Lieutenant!" Schott called. He didn't wait for the woman to reach him before he was already giving her orders.

"The commander at the launch site is in charge of the base, I need the families and children all moved inside, and a hundred men to guard them. You will stay with the families. Everyone else is with me. _Everyone_ , is that clear?"

The woman stared. "Sir, are you leaving us?"

Winn placed his hand on the familiar gun strapped to his thigh. "I have sat back in safety and let everyone else fight this war for too long. We're going to take the gateway."

"Sir!" she protested, alarmed.

He glared her into silence, leaning close, eye level. "I am _through_ sitting on the sidelines and watching my men die, knowing I will always be the one still standing in the end," he bit out. "There is no point anymore if the Führer comes back through." He straightened, setting his shoulders back. "I've sent all my weapons out. Now," He inhaled deeply and gave her a thin smile that held no humor. Only resolution. "It is high time for your general to be a soldier again."


	2. The Rest of the War Pt 2

**The Rest of the War, Pt 2:**

 _ **One Maniac at a Time We Will Take it Back**_

Half an hour, time enough to reach the gateway in trucks, had turned into an eternity. Not knowing what awaited them at the facility, the caravan had stopped some distance away and the Fighters were on foot when an explosion shook the earth.

It was morning, but the sun was not yet above the horizon, and a dull mist shrouded the grassy field and the building in front of them. Smoke mixed with the mist, and the facility that had once been the Freedom Fighters' pride now stood in ash and ruin.

And silence.

The kind of silence that only comes after a storm has already hit.

They hadn't made it in time. _Time, time_ , always his enemy, always against him, always winning. They hadn't even been halfway there when the ground quaked and Schott screamed at his men to get down. Flashes of fire burned the sky in front of them and the receiver in Schott's right ear was suddenly bursting with urgent voices asking if the troops were harmed, and if they could see what was happening.

The gateway, he was told as everything quieted, had exploded somehow without the Red Tornado's strike. The facility sensors had all gone dead. While Schott had wanted to celebrate, instead he found himself standing in a field full of winter-dead grass, staring at the smoke. Despite wanting this, all he felt in that minute was defeat.

The Reich won again and he didn't even know why.

Schott now crouched on the outside line of the fence, a trail of Fighters behind him, all of them watching the facility pensively. He could see the dark shape of a body on the other side of the chain-link barrier, the black uniform and red armband glistening with dew.

Rifle slung over his shoulder, handgun in its holster, he stood slowly, cautiously, and felt his men rise with him. Communicating with hand signals, he sent men to explore the perimeter and stepped forward to the open gate.

They entered the facility like thieves, slinking in columns around the abandoned vehicles of the Reich.

There had been no word from Leo or Ray since the Red Tornado crashed and the explosion at the facility sent their base into a panic. Their instruments had picked up that the gateway had opened. Something had gone, or something had come through, but whether or not Leo and the rest had succeeded was uncertain, and Schott had no idea what he would find once he stepped inside what was left of the building now in front of him. He gritted his teeth and pushed through the rubble that had once been the door.

Nothing moved inside the room other than the smoke. The rest of the Fighters clambered over piles of brick and metal behind him. Schott pulled the collar of his jacket over his mouth to filter out the smoke, his eyes stinging while he took in the destruction and a line of his men advanced like a wall across the open room to clear the area.

In the center of the room, a blackened crater now sat where the temporal gateway once had been. Temporal and temporary, the charred hole in the concrete, filled with a spiderweb of mangled and melted bits of metal and wiring, served as final proof to losing it to the Reich. The technology had never been simple or safe, and something must have been damaged in the fight, causing it to combust.

At the very least, Schott reminded himself grimly, the Führer's doomsday machine now had no way of returning home. But it was the Führer himself who still held Schott's concern - along with his commanding general and wife, and the otherworldly speedster whose scientific prowess must have allowed them to finish building the portal as quickly as they did. Had they returned right before the explosion? If so, had they taken his men? Or had the mission succeeded and the doubles and his men made it to the other earth?

All he knew was that the gateway had surged with use once before the explosion. Something had passed through. Schott hoped this meant that Leo and Ray and their guests had all made it to the other world - and if the other speedster who was with them was to be believed, they could recreate the breach from their side and return.

"General!" one of the Fighters stood about thirty paces to his left, a little ways from the crater, and was toeing the concrete with his boot.

Schott left the hole behind and went to see what had grabbed the soldier's attention. A small pool of dark, thick liquid was smeared at the Fighter's feet, marks dragging through it where something had moved across the floor. Blood, and a lot of it, and without a body close enough to belong to it. Someone had been injured, and someone had left the room. He looked up around the warehouse space, and began to see just how many bodies lay strewn through the wreckage.

"Check the bodies," he told his men.

Another Fighter, lean and bearded, with too many piercings to count, looked dismayed. "Sir, why? They're in uniforms and-"

"It's hard to tell what they're in," Schott cut him off. All the bodies wore gasmasks, their identities hidden, and it wouldn't be the first time the Reich had tried to trick the Resistance into believing they held the upper hand. To his tired eyes, the uniforms and the shadows they lay in began to run together. He focused on the Fighter. "You were in the tower when the strangers came in?"

The pierced man nodded. Schott knew him vaguely. There were too many of the Freedom Fighters to know them all well, but definitely few enough of them to remember a good half of their names. This man's name was Nadiir, and he had a wife and… a daughter, maybe two daughters, back at the base. Schott had a memory of Nadiir holding a small girl and laughing over watery coffee and spiced rations when they celebrated beating back a Nazi attack on an outer camp a few weeks ago.

"Do you remember what they looked like?" Schott asked. His head was pounding and he was aware his lack of sleep might be impairing him. He wanted a second pair of eyes.

"Yes."

"Good, you walk with me."

Schott instructed half the Fighters to bring all the bodies they could find and lay them out by the crater. The rest of the men he sent to see if they could find any sign that the Führer or his generals had returned. It was grim work, but slowly Schott and Nadiir went down the line of bodies - he counted forty of them before he decided he didn't care about their number - and removed their gasmasks and helmets to make sure none of the faces were familiar.

The only body in the group that gave Schott pause was a man he once knew, a former Freedom Fighter who had deserted to the Nazi army almost a year ago. Schott couldn't remember all his men's names, but the face of this traitor he had never forgotten.

"Andrew," Nadiir said softly, looking at the same man. He waved a hand over the body in an awkward gesture. "We ate together sometimes, between patrols. He never… he didn't act like he hated me. I never thought he would join them."

Schott moved down to the last three bodies in the row, all of which, to his relief, were Nazi strangers. "He didn't desert because he hated anyone, Nadiir," he said. "He left because surrender sometimes looks like victory, and it's a hell of a lot easier."

There was nothing left for them in the compound aside from the Reich's vehicles and weapons, which Schott assigned to Nadiir to be collected and organized. The Fighter didn't realize it at the moment, but he had been promoted. Schott was flying blind at the moment, and flying solo - he needed someone to rely on. He had no means of replacing James, but the Fighters went through enough ranks that he had learned to form a quick picture of who he could trust.

In his ear, the woman who had been running their communications came on again. "General Schott," she said. What was her name, anyway? An L, wasn't it? _Lyra_ , a voice in his head whispered. He shook the thought away. Leigh, he thought. That sounded right. "What's your situation? What are the damages?"

He could have chastised her for demanding information from him, but he understood she was sitting back at the base, helpless and clueless and concerned. "The gateway is gone," he informed her, as if she needed that confirmation. "The Nazi troops here are all…" he trailed off.

Forty men. He had counted forty dead enemies now lined up near the crater before discounting their number as irrelevant.

"General Schott?" Leigh asked.

He tuned her out. "Count the bodies!" he shouted to no one in particular. A few of the men started to obey, but Schott beat them to it, pacing around the crater and counting the dead black coats in a suddenly fevered state.

Fifty-seven. There were only fifty-seven men here.

" _The gateway is guarded by 30 Panzer XIIs, 50 Sturmtigers, and 100 Schutzstaffel officers,"_

Leo's precise statistics echoed in Schott's memory. One hundred Schutzstaffel officers. Fifty-seven bodies.

Nadiir reentered the warehouse with the men he had taken to secure the Reich's vehicles and weaponry and Schott stopped him. "How many Panzers are out there?" he asked.

"Twenty-eight." Nadiir's answer was prompt. He'd made a point to take count, an observation Schott filed away to commend him on later. Nadiir pointed to two different lumps in the rubble of the warehouse. "Two more were destroyed in the explosion, along with some of the machine guns. The rest are still on the tanks outside."

The weaponry was all present, along with a few trucks and other non-weaponized vehicles. But forty-three men. _Forty-three_ enemy soldiers were unaccounted for.

"We need to get out of here," Schott announced. He waved at the Fighters still milling through the rubble. "Fall back!" he ordered, and he slung his rifle from his shoulder into a more ready position.

Nadiir raised his own weapon. "What is it?"

"They didn't kill them all. Some of the Schutzstaffel must have escaped when they discovered they were losing, before the portal blew. And they didn't take anything with them."

Nadiir was shaking his head. "But what does that mean? Where could they have gone?"

"They had two options," Schott explained while they all filed outside, on guard, weapons up. "Either they stayed to lay an ambush for any reinforcements who came, and are now realizing that leaving their weapons behind was a very poor choice in plans. Or," he felt himself smile, a Leo kind of smile, and shook his head in wonder and amusement. "Or they ran to try and make it to the Führer's closest base. On foot."

Passing orders down the ranks, Schott led the men out of the compound and across the field, everyone guarding their backs from enemy fire that never came.

Nadiir smiled too and gripped his gun a little tighter. "They won't have gotten too far."

Schott slapped Nadiir's shoulder and felt himself laugh. It surprised him. There was a lot of anger, a lot of roiling emotions he couldn't name in that laugh, but there was an eagerness too, a tiny spot of something that might have been called hope if the circumstances were something more innocent.

"If the Führer made it back to our side, he will be with those soldiers and vulnerable." Schott grabbed the handle of the lead truck's door as they reached it and heard engines starting up all around him. "If he is still trapped on the other side, they have no leader, no direction, and no idea we are coming for them."

Two hours since the Red Tornado had been launched from the Freedom Fighter's base in the old city, gunfire exploded off the metal shell of the lead truck, causing the driver to slam on the brakes and swerve the vehicle to the right, the metal side of the vehicle creating a barrier between the soldiers and the bullets.

Schott had been resting his head against the window, though whether or not he slept he couldn't say. As the first rain of bullets cascaded against the truck he jerked back with a yell. Nadiir was behind him and shouted something that was lost in the noise.

The truck nearly careened nearly onto its side with the force of the turn, and then shuddered to a halt. Gunfire came from multiple sides, hammering into the vehicle and pelting the nearby ground.

Schott threw open the door and slid out, turning to pull Nadiir and the driver out behind him. Around them, the rest of the convoy was stopping, and Fighters swarmed from the vehicles, some dodging behind them for cover, others setting up return fire.

The remaining Schutzstaffel officers had heard the convoy on their tail and decided to stop and go on the offensive rather than be run down, a response Schott was counting on and had instructed his men about as they drove earlier. These officers of the Reich were ruthless, talented killers, but without their weapons and armored cars, the disadvantage was for once theirs – a disadvantage Schott and the Freedom Fighters were prepared to take.

Schott raised his rifle over the hood of the truck and took aim, dimly hearing Nadiir shouting at him to get down. He didn't listen. The rifle bucked in his steady hands and an enemy went down. Schott fired again. And again.

A dozen or more of the enemy went down under the first barrage from the Resistance and Schott stepped around the truck. He raised one hand and shouted, urging the Fighters press in, and watched his men respond, gathering themselves and rushing the enemy's position.

And he ran with them.

Nadiir was at his side, firing into the bushes and weeds where the Schutzstaffel hid. The ever-present ghosts went with him as well. Today, their weight drove him forward.

For his parents, his general, and his love. For his earth, his friends, and the future.

The battle on that field lasted only moments as the Freedom Fighters – soldiers who had been in hiding and on the run for months – found courage and strength Schott could never have inspired in them. Finally, this was a battle they could win. Finally, they were accomplishing something. Finally, they were the ones pushing forward, merciless and deadly.

A group of Fighters from the third truck in the convoy rushed an enemy and took him down, and then all was suddenly quiet, as the Resistance looked around them and realized no one was left fighting back. Someone started to laugh and someone else let out a victory whoop.

Schott raised a hand to get their attention when a blaze of new gunfire spat at him from behind.

Nadiir screamed and Schott pulled him to the ground. The Resistance returned fire. Two of the Schutzstaffel officers had sneaked around them somehow and taken control of one of the trucks, firing at their backs. Schott glimpsed the polished brim of a cap, and then Sturmbannführer Lance's face. His blood ran cold.

This was the Nazi major who had left the Resistance general-less once before. Fresh angry burns marked his face, but otherwise he looked just as he had the last time Schott had seen him, shouting about the pure and the defilers as he and his men struggled to hold Schott's commander, the general whose title he now carried.

The Reich had not fully reckoned what it was they were attempting to do that day, or who it was they were fighting, and the dread grew on their faces as the man they fought transformed into his true form. No longer proudly wearing the skin of a man they hated, but the true skin of a being they feared.

But the Sturmbannführer never hesitated, the hate on his face growing instead. Schott, James, and Leo had almost reached his side when the General saw them and shouted "Run!"

A small explosion had knocked them backward.

Schott remembered every detail of those moments: of fighting to regain his feet, ears ringing from the shock grenade Lance had thrown. Lance looking with delight upon his downed foe. Leo firing wildly into the swarm of Nazi soldiers who flooded in and blocked the fallen General from their view. James pulling Leo back and shouting for Schott to follow.

And then the second grenade going off. Schott throwing his hands over his head to shield himself from the shrapnel, feeling the bits of metal cut into his skin.

James had had to pull him out of there that day.

And his General was gone.

Now, though. Now, standing in this field after hiding in the base for so long, the Sturmbaanführer was there in front of him.

Their gazes met across the gap for an instant, and Schott lifted his rifle and took aim.

Lance made a dive for the passenger door, screaming the nightmare mantra, "Hail victory!"

Inside the truck's cab, the other Schutzstaffel appeared at the window and opened fire, forcing Schott to drop behind cover again with a curse.

Before the Fighters could rally, the truck's tires spun in the dirt, grabbed traction in the long grass, and shot it forward across the field. Gunfire from the retreating vehicle pinned down any would-be pursuers.

The minute the firing stopped, Schott rolled over to face Nadiir. The newly promoted Fighter had been hit, and he clutched at his shoulder and moaned, face tight with pain.

"I need a medic!" Schott bellowed at the convoy, pressing his hands to the hole in Nadiir's shoulder, causing the other man to grimace. Schott knew bullet wounds almost as well as he knew the weapons that left them, and he kept the pressure of his hands as steady as he could, remembering the pool of blood in the destroyed facility, thinking about how both costly and cheap a currency it was in his life.

"Sir, I can't…" Nadiir started, grabbing Schott's arm.

"Shut up," Schott ordered. He looked from Nadiir's face down to the wound his own gloved fingers covered. "You are going to be fine, Ja–" He cut off abruptly, eyes widening slightly, lips still parted to finish speaking the name of his dead brother. He swallowed and shook his head once, as though he could dislodge the memories. "You will be fine," he repeated firmly, though his voice betrayed him when it trembled underneath the hardness.

Two medics – one too young to have much skill and the other a quick-fingered woman with streaks of gray in her hair – arrived and took his place, setting to work on Nadiir's injury.

"We have to track the Sturmbaanführer," Schott said, mostly to himself, looking at the convoy and his men spread out in disarray.

He stood to begin issuing orders and felt himself sway, flashes of light and color bursting at the edges of his vision.

"General, are you injured?" the older medic asked, her voice sounded like it was coming to him through water. She was saying something else, but he didn't hear.

 _I do not have time for this_ , he thought just before the world went black.

Schott had no idea how much time had passed when he opened his eyes again. The field, the convoy, the trucks, Nadiir, Lance – all of it was gone, replaced by a familiar ceiling and a familiar cot, and the not so familiar feeling that someone was in the room with him.

He turned his head to see a woman sitting in the chair at his desk, tapping out commands on a small computer. "Catherine," he said in surprise.

She was no longer wearing the colors of her disguise as the enemy, but instead was dressed in simple slacks and a pullover sweater in the muted colors of the Resistance. "Oh good," she deadpanned. "You're awake."

"What happened?" he asked, his voice thick from sleep. His head was heavy and every movement felt childish and slurred. He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to get his bearings.

"What happened, Winslow," she said, getting up, "is that you collapsed while in the field and gave everyone a very unpleasant shock and caused a great deal of concern. But it turns out that you're fine, so you made everyone worry about you over nothing. And do you know why?" She looked exasperated. "Because, apparently, no one in this base has any memory of seeing you sleep, and never concerned themselves with reminding their strong and mighty leader that he is, in fact, human. How long was it, Winslow?" she asked, delicately placing her hands on her hips like a disapproving aunt.

He opened his mouth and she cleared her throat sharply. "No. Don't answer. As usual you tried to do everything with no regard for your personal wellbeing, and now here we are."

He decided to ignore her jabs for the moment. She was usually sarcastic to cover other emotions, and he would wait until he was awake enough to puzzle out which ones. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Two days."

Schott bolted up in the bed, swinging his legs over the side before having to plant his hands on the edge of the mattress to keep from succumbing to the wave of dizziness that washed over him. He swore at the weakness and cocked his head to the right, looking sideways up at Catherine sharply. " _Two. Days_. There is a _war_ on, Catherine, and you let me sleep for two days?!" His anger at her was only slightly less than his anger at himself. How could he have laid in bed for hours while the world around him was tearing itself apart?

"The war has lasted almost a hundred years, it's not going anywhere in two days. And I'm afraid you didn't have much say in it," she said. There was a flash of sympathy from her. She sat down on the mattress beside him, reaching out as if to pat his hand like a small child, before she instead folded both her hands in her lap. "When I arrived and they told me what happened, I ordered that you be drugged."

Schott's mouth dropped open, aghast. "You drugged me." He turned away with a short huff of a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief.

"No one argued the point," Catherine informed him. He hummed at that, irritated. "Which means either they don't respect you at all… or they respect you enough to see sense when it concerns you."

"What about Lance?" he asked, facing her again and holding her gaze with his own. "Did he get away on the field?"

She nodded. "He escaped, yes. You lost three men in the field and more were injured. The Fighters were more concerned with bringing you and the other casualties back to safety." He was reminded that one of the reasons he respected her was her straightforwardness. Unlike Leo, she never hid anything behind her words, she was blunt to a fault, and if you didn't guess at the few things she did only hint at, it was the fault of your own thick-headedness.

Even so, he couldn't help the way his fingers tightened around the thin fabric of the mattress cot, or the angry strain in his neck and shoulders as he finally managed to stand. Lance was still free. Even if the Führer and his generals and his weapon never returned, Lance still held enough power, hatred, and knowledge to keep the Reich from falling apart before it had time to regroup. They had to knock out every pillar, every stronghold. The Reich had taken over the entire planet, it wasn't going to surrender in a day.

His jacket, gloves, and boots had been laid out beside the desk and he sat down in the chair to put them on, not willing to let Catherine see how much moving from the bed to the desk had winded him. Someone, he noticed as he pulled the first glove on over his scarred hands, had taken care to wash the dirt and Nadiir's blood from sturdy material before returning them. He froze before pulling on the second glove.

"Nadiir," he said. "Where is he?"

"The man who has enough jewelry on his face to make any queen or pirate green with envy is just fine, Winslow," she assured him dryly. "The bullet passed clean through, and you kept him from losing too much blood, bravo. I believe he's with his family recovering now."

Schott slipped into the other glove and tugged the straps tight. It felt like putting armor on.

"Winslow," Catherine started before she was interrupted be a knock at the door. The lines around her eyes tightened a fragment in annoyance.

"Who is it?" Schott called toward the door.

"General?" a young male voice spoke on the other side. "Can I come in?"

Schott sent a quick look at Catherine before he stood again and walked the short distance of the small room to throw open the door and reveal the person standing out in the dimly lit hall.

It was Ray Terrill.

A full two hours, three cups of black coffee for Schott, eight interruptions from various Fighters checking on their General's condition before he distractedly ordered them elsewhere, and one urgent call requiring Catherine's attention all passed before Ray's full telling of events came out. It was another hour into preparations, communications, debates – mostly being between Catherine and Schott – and decisions for it all to finally sink in.

The scientist known as Eobard was gone.

The inhuman General of the Reich, and wife of the Führer, was dead.

The weapon, the Doomsday Weapon that could, from Ray's information and Schott's knowledge, annihilate an entire planet, was destroyed.

The Führer himself, the devil who stalked Schott's nightmares and waking hours, and had threatened and destroyed all that Schott had known or loved… was also dead. He still couldn't reconcile in his mind the two images he knew to be true: Lyra's lifeless form in his enemy's arms, and the enemy himself lying dead with arrows in chest.

Schott lifted his face from his hands, uncertain how long he had been sitting again by his bed in the silence, or when everyone else had all gone about their own tasks. Too long. He needed to move. Inhaling deeply and banishing all traces of the emotions constricting his throat, Schott gathered himself and left the room.

The tower was in a flurry of activity, following his most recent commands: they were going after Lance. They were going to push back the Reich, strike and strike hard while they could, and not give one inch in return. If there ever was a time for them to win this war, it was now. The Reich had almost overrun the Resistance when the last general fell. Schott was more than prepared to return the favor now.

As he rounded a corner in the hall, a small boy ran in front of him, knocking into his legs and Schott stepped backward instinctively, letting the child blow past him.

"Sorry, sir!" the boy called without checking his pace. He carried an old piece of pipe, vaguely shaped like a gun, and pointed it at another boy who was chasing after him.

Schott watched after them for a minute, thinking about the conversations he and Lyra had about beginning a family, in some other world and some other time that was a little more kind. _Someday_ , he thought, _they might play with toys instead of weapons._

Continuing on, he got into the elevator that would carry him to the top of the tower, where the activity was at full force. Voices calling back and forth, communications coming in on every line. Catherine had already been at work gathering all their allies, spread in tiny hopeful clusters around the globe, all of them smaller and more fragile than the Freedom Fighters. They were getting into position, setting into motion plans for attacks they had never had the courage to pursue before.

Leo was right after all. The strangers from the other earth had done what he had been too consumed by anger to accomplish: they had rekindled the Resistance's hope. Even though the heroes from Earth One had not come back to his earth, and Leo had found some reason to delay his own return, their short presence had changed the course of the war.

"General!" the female communications lieutenant, Leigh, heralded him before his boot even touched the raised circle in the center of the room where he could see his battle plan laid out on the table on one side while commanding all stations in the circle. She looked more bedraggled than he had seen her last, and her eyes held an almost feverish light that Schott was certain he would recognize in a mirror. They all had a similar energy – urgent, desperate, but alive.

"The Fourth patrol that we rerouted after the facility was lost," she began, "they reported back to us their position. One of the camps between us and the Führer's House has been abandoned. The patrol was able to liberate the prisoners behind held there, and they sent word back to us from what the prisoner's said." She smiled a broad, dangerous smile. "We found him."

"The Sturmbannführer," he said quietly.

She nodded. "He's retreated with his men to the Führer's house." Less a house than a compound, the Führer's favorite stronghold served as base, prison, and laboratory, where Thawne had invented and constructed most of their weapons. The Resistance base was not far from it, preferring to operate under the enemy's nose just to irritate them if nothing else. "He seems to be trying to shield himself until he can figure out his next move."

Schott set his hands on his hips and dropped his head, closing his eyes. He had to be clearheaded here. He had to be careful. The loss of James, the anger at the strangers from Ray's earth, the unraveling of his old plans, the impossible revelation that the Führer was dead, the ghosts. For the moment, none of it mattered. Only this, only ever this: the war and the resistance.

When he looked up, the activity of the room was still pulsing, the voices still calling over to one another as troops were gathered and weapons armed. But it seemed a little quieter, it made a little more sense.

Catherine had come in, standing in front of the elevator, watching him with a quizzical arch in her brow. Waiting.

"It is time," Schott said. Time was never on his side, there was never enough, never at the right pace. Except now. Now, when it felt like the rhythm of the clock was keeping pace with every move he made. Four days since the Führer had seized the gateway, and thirty-three years since the world decided in its cruel irony to gift a small child to a Jewish woman and a German weapons-maker. The panic he had felt the last time he stood here was gone.

He didn't have to make a speech, they didn't expect it of him. He looked around at the Fighters, the Resistance, and nodded. "Time we put an end to all things. Direct all combatants to the house of the Führer."

The lieutenant nodded once and set off, and the pitch of the room's energy changed, like a river that had been slowly flooding to the top of a dam, and now a release had been pulled.

"It's the beginning of the end," Catherine said, somewhat poetically, from the side.

Schott nodded and stepped off the platform to join her and lead the way to their own preparations. "At last."

The journey to the Führer's house took several hours, but to Schott that no longer seemed to matter. They followed the same path the previous patrol had taken, cautiously crossing the area where the now-empty camp stood in silence. Schott made a mental note to return and see it burned to the ground.

Ray came with him, his secret weapon, his friend. Without Leo and James, and now without Nadiir as well, Schott felt stronger with the Earth One fighter by his side. It helped even that Ray's nervous energy caused flickers of his power to show in the dark cab of the truck. Catherine had stayed behind to lead the attack from the base. No one had even attempted to convince Schott to stay.

The compound, once a small city, now designated the Führer's House, was before them all at once, and the main force of the Resistance comprised of Schott's Freedom Fighters and a host of spies and soldiers Catherine had brought with her, drove straight in.

The first slew of gunfire that hit the convoy was later than anticipated, but as planned, the drivers gunned the engines and drove the vehicles as far into the old city as they could against the bullets.

Ray and Schott's vehicle made it all the way to a small garage, allowing them to jump out of it under cover. Two blackcoats appeared in the entrance and were quickly dispatched by the other Fighters with them.

Outside of the truck, the sound of the war rang even louder, shouting and explosions deafening their ears.

"Remember!" Schott shouted to his group as they stood by the truck, readying to run across the open area and deeper into the Führer's former lair. "You will stop for nothing, and no one, until we find the Sturmbannführer!" The fierceness of his voice was met by the same fierceness on all of their faces: hardened, ready, willing. "We kill him, and then we kill the next one, and the next one after that, until there is _no one_ left!" He looked around at them all, their focus intent on him despite the chaos. "For our earth!"

"For freedom!" shouted Ray at his side, caught up in the fervor.

The men roared back: "Freedom!"

They burst from the cover of the garage, a group of men turned into a single weapon, a deadly combination of hope and wrath. Running across the open street, they aimed for the most formidable building in the city, built by the Reich after the city had been taken – Lance would be there, if he was anywhere at all.

Somehow, against the odds, they made it to the building. Four other groups of Fighters arrived with them while the others still fought for every inch gained. Schott could hear the hum of a Panzer somewhere in one of the near streets. He didn't know how long they would hold the advantage.

Together, the Resistance soldiers forced their way into the building, firing against the enemy that swarmed to meet them. Ray was a flash of light and movement, flying when he could, and blazing through the enemy, allowing the Fighters enough of an advantage to keep pressing on.

There was no Führer, no Führer's wife, and no devilish speedster to help the Nazi forces now. They were left with cold weapons, and an unorganized force attempting to rally behind an uncertain leader. The Fighters had Ray and, like Schott, they had a spirit they thought they had lost.

The flicker of a black coat down a corridor caught Schott's attention and he spun immediately, waving his men to follow. They chased the fleeing coat into a dark basement room. Schott was about to tell Ray to give them light when the electric lights flared on, blinding them. "Down!" Schott yelled, dropping as gunfire pelted at them.

Eyes adjusting to the light, Schott found the enemy across the room, firing a deadly barrage against the Fighters bottlenecked in the doorway. The man in the black coat was with them. Lance stood behind his own guard of troops, shouting viciously, spitting orders. Schott raised his rifle and aimed at the same time he realized Ray was tensing behind him and felt the surge of energy as the powered soldier took off.

" _Ray!"_ Schott bellowed, firing a spurt of bullets into the enemy to distract them.

Ray bowled into the Sturmbannführer only an instant before both forces met in a clash too tight for guns to be of any use. The Reich major had the presence of mind to lift his rifle and swing it at the oncoming Ray, knocking the flyer backwards. Ray hit the wall and collapsed.

In a rage, Schott fought through the Nazi ranks to get to his friend. He'd had enough of ghosts. He felt the enemy line break as the Fighters rallied with him and heaved a last effort into them, and they broke away, revealing Ray and the Sturmbannführer at the back of the room.

Ray was on the ground, getting up, and Lance was standing over him, shouting indistinctly. Schott lifted his rifle to fire and felt the empty click that announced he had run out of ammunition. All of his nightmares streamed from the empty gun instead. Schott was already reaching for his handgun, but he knew he didn't have time. Lance would kill Ray.

Beside Schott, another Fighter loosed a string of bullets and Lance went down.

There was more gunfire in the hall they had come from and the Resistance turned their guns in that direction. Schott ran to Ray and found to his relief that the other was slowly regaining his feet and only seeming dazed. He was favoring one leg.

Tossing his useless rifle to the side, Schott grabbed Ray's arm and pulled him the rest of the way to his feet. Ray nodded at him, shaken. "Thanks," he said. He had expended a lot of energy in the assault and was breathing heavily.

Behind them, there was a low groan. Schott spun, his handgun out of its holster and trained on the threat.

Lance had risen to his knees, though it seemed that he could not rise any further.

The burns from Ray's attack days before had swollen into angry white and red scars. Lance's leg had been shot by the Fighters. He was shaking with the effort it took to just kneel, his lips parted in a sneer and his teeth clenched.

They stood like that in a tense moment of silence, the cacophony of the war still going on outside.

Schott gestured at the Fighters who had stayed in the room. "Go," he said. "I promise, this one is no longer a threat to anyone."

No one questioned him. The Fighters checked their weapons and the fallen Nazi soldiers before taking off. Schott watched them leave, standing between Ray and the immobile Lance, before settling his gaze back on the fallen enemy. Head up, shoulders back, gun raised, the weight of his dark eyes rested only on Lance.

Hatred still burned in the Sturmbannführer's eyes, and some time ago it might have met its match in Schott. But now all his own eyes returned was a cold and detached pity, even his righteous anger was a faint spark in the dull depths of the gaze of a man who had been born of war. He didn't have any more strength to hate.

He thought about the others, the heroes who had visited his earth so briefly before retreating back to the safety of their own. Alex, Barry, and the rest. He wondered what they would have done to this lowly enemy, weaponless and defenseless before him. Capture. Conviction. Sentencing.

"Ray," Schott spoke tightly, his attention never wavering from Lance. The black coat looked like he wanted nothing more than to wrap his hands around Schott's throat, but it seemed it was all he could to do just continue kneeling where he was, frozen by injury and by the threat of Schott's gun. "The Führer is dead, and we… We are waking up to a new world, where war and hate will find little foothold. Where we will be free." His words gathered momentum, stumbling over each other in a fervent, undignified way. "Free to live. Free to hope. Free to choose what battles we fight and what times we remain at peace."

Ray looked at him in confusion, an uncertain expression on his face as he listened to this unexpected speech. He could hardly stand without Schott's support, and the three of them must have been a sight: Ray struggling to hold himself up, Lance paralyzed, and Schott standing immoveable between them.

He blinked sweat out of his eyes, lowering the gun he had trained on Lance, just slightly, still talking to Ray. "Whether you choose this as your home or return to your earth, do me a favor?" His pulse pounded in his head. "Be a better man than me."

Schott had made his men a promise that Lance was no longer a threat to anyone, and it was a promise he intended to keep. He leveled his gun once more and pulled the trigger.

Lance's body crumpled and fell backward, his death an homage to the hundreds who had died by his hands.

Ray stood in stunned silence, eyes frozen on the dead officer who had imprisoned and nearly executed him only a short time before. Schott didn't know what Ray thought of him now, but this was a scar he was willing to carry. He would sleep better in the days to come.

He took a deep, uncertain breath, and replaced his gun into the holster strapped to his thigh. Giving Ray the ghost of a smile that was equal parts relief and exhaustion, he moved to Ray's side to give him support. "Let's get out of this place."

"Why did he come here?" Ray asked as they moved toward the door.

Grateful to think of something other than what he had done, and the slim possibility of them escaping the Führer's house alive, even with Lance dead, Schott scooped up one of the Nazi weapons and gave it to Ray to use as both a defense and a crutch. "Because when the Führer was here it was a stronghold. I guess Lance just never realized he was depending on the power of an alien to protect him." The bitter irony of Lance's hatred for any being he considered substandard and his dependence on the Führer's wife was not lost on Schott.

"No, no," Ray said, stopping. "I mean, why did he come here?" He gestured to the basement room. "It was a clever trick with the lights, but did he really think cornering himself down here was a good idea?"

Schott frowned and paused to look around the area. The basement was one large open room, but not nearly large enough for the building it supported. Why had Lance come down here? Unless he was depending on still somehow getting out.

Walking back across the room, Schott stepped over Lance's body and placed a hand on the wall the Sturmbannführer had retreated to. It hummed under his touch. "There's another way out," Schott said, feeling around. His fingers grasped a switch and a door revealed itself, opening into a hall lit by dim red lights. If Schott had his bearings straight, and their intel was correct, this second basement ran beneath Thawne's laboratory.

Ray hobbled in through the doorway before Schott could stop him, acting as brash and foolhardy as Leo. "Coming?" He was regaining energy quickly.

Schott followed, drawing his pistol again. It wouldn't last long against any more Nazi troops they happened to run into, but he trusted it more than the Reich's guns.

The hall was so dark at first he thought it was a straight line of walls leading away, until he realized there were openings all along the sides.

A shiver ran deep into his bones and Ray stopped dead in his tracks as he recognized the same thing.

Cells.

They continued forward slowly, Schott taking the lead to peer into one of the cells. The first one was empty, a tangle of machinery and IVs the only evidence of what horror must have gone on before.

The second cell had a single occupant, the door left strangely ajar. A quick examination soon proved why, as the prisoner, a human female, was already dead.

Before they could continue checking the cells, a sound came from down the hall.

A single gunshot.

Someone was executing the prisoners.

He and Ray took off toward the sound, not stopping at any of the other cells until the dark shadow of a Reich soldier was in front of them. Schott fired once and then Ray was on top of the enemy in all his fiery brightness, injuries forgotten.

When the soldier lay dead on the floor, Schott looked at the other poor soul in the cell, victim of far more nightmares than he could know. He bent and patted down the pockets of the executioner's black uniform until he retrieved a keycard. "We can open the doors and take with us as many as can walk on their own," he told Ray. "And if we make it out of here, we will come back for the others."

The echoes of Oliver's words, the promise from Earth One, to not only bring his men home, but come back and help them fight, reverberated underneath his own promise. The green archer and the others had yet to make good on those words. Schott would hold to his.

Going to the next cell, Schott swiped the passlock with the stolen key and it beeped and unlocked. A dark, gaunt figure was strapped to a bed that was more of a table, partially covered with a sheet like a forgotten piece of furniture that had once been a treasured possession.

The figure did not belong to this Earth, and not to Ray's world either.

A faint blip on a monitor wired to the patient was the only sign that the starved, shrunken captive still lived.

Schott couldn't breathe, he was frozen in the doorway of the cell. He thought he might collapse like he had on the field.

"J'onn."

He staggered into the cell, raising a hand to rip the tubes and wires away before he stopped himself. It looked like the machinery was all that was keeping his commander alive. The Martian was in his true form, not the skin he had chosen to wear as a stand against the hatred of the Reich for the people of the planet he had adopted as home. Like Lyra, J'onn had come as a refugee. Like Lyra, he had stayed as a soldier. Like Lyra, he had taken the hand of a young Jewish boy and guided him along. And, like Lyra, Schott had thought he would never see him again.

Ray was beside him, mouth opened in horror and joy. "He's alive."

J'onn's eyes flickered open and a thrill of hope filled Schott as the Martian's foggy gaze fell on him. He smiled a thin, weak smile. "Winn," he said in that bass voice that had seen Schott grow from boy to leader.

"Ray," Schott said, aware that his voice was more that of a broken child than a general issuing an order. "Go open the other cells. J'onn, do you think you can stand?"

J'onn grimaced, but nodded. "It was useful to them," he said, "to allow me to regenerate slowly." Schott's gut twisted at the thought of what the Reich must have done in this room.

Schott's communicator in his ear, which had been silent as the battle raged, suddenly burst with static. "General!" Leigh's voice called.

Schott didn't move, didn't want to tear his attention away from J'onn for fear he would disappear in smoke. "Here," he said.

"I don't believe it sir, but… they came."

"Who?"

"Leo. And Alex, the woman from Earth One, and their speedster, and a host of soldiers. And… others… They're all here. The Reich is in retreat."

Ray, hearing on his own line, gave a whoop of celebration before seeming to realize where he was and quieting. Still, he grinned despite the pain in his injured leg, as he took off down the hall to begin releasing the other prisoners.

Schott immediately gave Leigh instructions to send available field medics into the laboratory, processing what she had told him.

"What is it?" J'onn asked, brow wrinkling with confusion. He hadn't heard any of it, and whatever they had done to him must have dampened his telekinetic ability.

Schott grabbed J'onn's cold hand in his own gloved one, fisting them together defiantly. The Martian squeezed back weakly and Schott smiled, shaking his head with disbelief.

"I think we won."


	3. The Rest of the War Epilogue

**The Rest of the War: Epilogue**

 _ **We Can Take the World Back from the Heart-Attacked**_

Decades after the Reich rose to power and conquered almost every nation, every people, every dirt patch and hill and sea; the empire was finally crumbling.

J'onn was given a bed beside Nadiir's to rest and recover in. He was too weak to tell them what had happened in the years of captivity, and he didn't know about Lyra or James, but for now: he was alive and home, and that was all that mattered.

Schott believed he had even seen Catherine looking a little emotional when the medics carried the Martian into the base and she had busily gotten to work making certain he was comfortable and looked after. Schott watched her frenzied antics, shaking his head.

"Um, General?" Nadiir, lying in his own bed, two little girls cuddled up on either side of him, caught Schott's attention. He couldn't move his arms on account of the injury and his daughters, but he nodded in a way that vaguely indicated Schott's face.

Schott reached a hand up and felt wetness, at first thinking he had an injury that was bleeding, before he realized at some point in the past few minutes he had been crying.

"Pull it together, sir," Nadiir said.

Schott chuckled and made sure the wayward tear was the only one of its kind. "Get some rest, invalid," he ordered gruffly.

As much as he wanted to stay by J'onn's side and never let the man who had taken him in leave his sight again, Schott still had work to do. He left the infirmary in the able hands of the Resistance medics, casting a last glance at J'onn's bed to cement in his own mind the fact that J'onn was alive and home, and then left.

Back at the top of the tower, orders were still being given out, soldiers were still fighting, but thanks to the arrival of the Earth One soldiers and those with powers, the Reich was permanently crippled. Leaderless, they were being defeated in battles across the map, spreading from the victorious Freedom Fighters' once-lonely outpost.

"Wi– General Schott?" a female voice interrupted him where he stood looking through schematics and organizing troop routes on a computer. He looked up to find the same young woman who had caused him so much trouble when she and her friends first showed up.

"Alex," he said.

He waved at a monitor at one side of the room, showing a map of Nazi soldiers who had been recently routed by a single opponent. "I see you saved your sister." Leo had already attempted an introduction with the Kryptonian hero, perhaps to prove that he had been right to destroy the Red Tornado and go against Schott's orders. Schott refused.

Alex smiled, but her behavior was antsy, like there was a point she wanted to get to rather dance around. "I told her about you, about all of this. She wanted to help."

Schott nodded back absently. "I do not mean to be rude, but all things considered, I think it's best if your sister and I do not meet."

Alex stared at him, hurt.

"I almost shot your friend Oliver when he stood where you are standing now," Schott told her, letting himself be blunt. "And I did kill someone today. He deserved to die, but…" he let the thought hang in the air, not sure how he intended to finish.

"I understand," Alex said, surprising him. She was much calmer, much more reasonable now that her sister was not in peril. "But I did… I do have someone else I'd like you to meet, someone who wanted to meet you."

Schott frowned at her, confused. The pieces clicked together right as another person, as if by some secret cue, arrived next to Alex's side.

Alex was smiling again. "General Schott, this is Winn."

Schott stared at the person across from him, a mirror image of himself, if the mirror was a lot kinder than the years of war had been to him.

This person, this other Winn, seemed to get over his own surprise quickly and grinned. "I love the beard," he said. When Schott just continued to look at him, the other Winn let out a rush of words: "I mean, I had a beard for a little while," he looked at Alex, "before I met Kara. I had to shave it when I started at CatCo, some rule of Cat's." He waved a hand airily. "Anyway, it's… It's just really awesome to meet you, um- What, what do I call you? Winn 2.0? Other Me?" He chuckled.

Schott blinked. "'General' is fine," he said.

"Whoa," Winn held up a hand. "Déjà vu."

Schott couldn't get over how alike and how very much unalike this Winn, Alex's Winn, was from him. There was light, joy, and humor coming off this other person in waves. He seemed ten years younger than Schott, and the open and carefree way he carried himself was almost childlike.

Alex seemed to get that the situation was growing uncomfortable and intervened. "Winn also came to help," she said pointedly.

Winn's eyes lit up. "Oh! Right!" He grinned at Schott. "Look at this." Helping himself to a computer, he paused long enough to look back at Schott as if to ask permission, then decide that he had already crossed that line and might as well continue, and plugged in a small device to the computers before Schott could stop him.

In moments, the scattered communication systems that had been running on backups of backups and scrounged technologies from the Reich, and whatever little bits the Resistance could make up on their own, were all running together, blips and bugs disappearing as the Schott doppelganger, wearing a black combat vest clumsily fastened over a blue-checked shirt, set about work. When he was finished, he spun around in the chair, removing his handheld device from the Resistance computers with a flourish and a self-satisfied smile. "Just a little something I whipped up for the DEO. Of course, they didn't really need it, but I thought that, ya know, this being Nazi-infested and everything, you could…" he trailed off, staring at Schott. "You don't like it."

Schott realized he was staring blankly at the array of perfectly-working systems now on his screen. "That is amazing. Incredible." He glanced at Alex. "Your world is very, very different from mine."

Alex just smiled.

Winn was grinning too. "Finally," he directed to Alex. "Someone who appreciates what I can do."

Alex thumped him on the shoulder. "I don't think it counts when it's you."

Schott bristled at that. This boy, this bright, happy, carefree soul was so far removed from any reflection of himself it was almost hard to even reconcile the physical resemblance. This boy had never been through the things that had turned him into the man he was. They couldn't be more different.

"I am _nothing_ like you," Schott returned.

The moment the words left his mouth, Winn's expression inexplicably changed. The light smile slipped away, and his movement slowed, and for an instant in his eyes Schott saw a darkness, a sadness he recognized. For a minute, he saw a true mirror of himself, and the difference startled him. This Winn was not like him maybe, there was hardly a resemblance at all, but in that look he saw that this boy too carried ghosts. In another second, it was gone, and Winn carefully smiled again, but Schott hadn't missed any of it.

They were interrupted by the Speedster and Leo, entering the room looking exhausted but proud. Ray was behind him, limping and still laughing.

There was so much laughter in the room, Schott noticed. And it wasn't just coming from the people of Earth One. His Fighters were celebrating all around him. Their road was so long, and it would be so hard – with or without the help of the people from the other world – but they were rejoicing.

The Resistance had won.

"This is so cool," Winn said softly behind him. Schott glanced back at his double for a second, and Winn smiled at him. Schott's brow furrowed in bemusement, but his mouth smiled back, despite himself.

Alex and her people did not stay with the Resistance long. Their own world did need them, but the soldiers they brought stayed, and Winn had a device he gave them to be able to communicate back to Earth One. Troops from Alex's army, the DEO as they called it, would be ready to come and replenish the Resistance's forces, and interchange with the soldiers already there. Alex herself and several of the others promised they would continue to help until the last of the Reich were finally erased from his world. Ray had once explained how the Nazis had come and how they had been defeated years before. It seemed like the people of that other world still remembered the horror of that time enough that they couldn't stand knowing it was still happening somewhere else.

When a purple whirl of a portal filled the room beside Schott's strategy board, the visitors from Earth One were again leaving, this time with far fewer fireworks. Leo and Ray were staying, for that Schott was endlessly grateful. He had lost too much family.

When it was Winn's turn to leave through the portal, he hesitated. "So, if I hugged you, would it like," he laughed nervously, "rip a hole in space?"

Schott raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms around his chest defensively. He was not a hugging type of person. "Apart from the one you are about to leave through? Possibly."

Winn deflated. "Okay, no, I mean, yeah, you're right. Probably a bad idea." He turned to go.

"Winn," Schott said, stopping him.

His doppelganger looked back, brow quirked upward, mouth pressed into a thoughtful line.

"Thank you." Schott looked back at his computer systems, humming along efficiently, their years' of abuse rectified in a matter of minutes.

Winn grinned broadly, then tried to straighten his expression into something cool and collected. "You're welcome," he said simply. Turning to Alex who stood waiting for him, Winn was talking again as they walked to the breach. "Okay, okay, but Cisco and I were just thinking that-"

The rest was lost to Schott as his twin stepped through the portal and left.

Leo came over, looking extremely confused and slightly disturbed as he shook his head, patting Schott on the shoulder. "I prefer you, General," he said.

"General Schott," a new voice called from behind him.

Schott forced a calm tone as he answered. "They call you Kara on your earth, I hear."

He looked first at the red boots and then up at the person who stood next to him. He'd dealt with Oliver and his own double. He could handle the reverse image of the Führer's wife.

"Well, most people don't actually know that," she said. "I'm surprised you do. Alex told you my name?"

"I pieced things together," he said.

They stood awkwardly for a minute.

"You," he began, "You don't actually look like her."

"No?"

"Your eyes are very different," he explained. Kara's eyes were kind, lit with a life and wisdom that betrayed her youthful personality. "I didn't want to meet you," he started, then wasn't sure where he was going with that thought and gave it up. "Is everyone on your earth a better version of themselves than they are here?"

"Not everyone, no. Some are the same, some are worse, some are just…different. I'm really glad you're not evil though," Kara laughed. "I don't think I could handle that."

"Your sister tells me that on your side, you and I, or him, the other one, are good friends."

Kara's brow wrinkled and she smiled, puzzled. "When did she tell you about me and Winn?"

"When she was trying to convince why I should rescue you."

"Oh."

"Kara, or Supergirl, or whoever. Listen. As someone who has lost a number of friends? You should hang on to those two."

Kara sobered. "Always."

He nodded. "And… thank you."

Her smile, so ready on these alternates' faces, returned. "Your job is to protect your people. And you didn't put that aside, even when you did let Alex go back to save me, so I can continue to protect my earth too. It's only right that I return the favor."

Schott nodded. "Maybe next time we meet it will be in better circumstances."

"I look forward to it, General Schott." She was still smiling and he imagined she must find it strange and rather humorous to call him that, considering her friend. He didn't mind.

Kara and the rest of the Earth One inhabitants then followed Alex and Winn through the portal, leaving behind only the regiments of soldiers who would continue to fight on this side. With a faint sound like wind, the breach disappeared.

"Show's over, friends," Schott declared to the room. "We still have a lot to do."

Ray nodded at him. "Yes sir," he said, spinning around and heading off one way to direct a group of the Resistance while Leo commandeered another. There was somehow not a trace of fear, doubt, or disgust in Ray's response to a leader he had seen execute a man in cold blood – only the same amount of respect he had shown Schott from the beginning. Schott didn't know what he had done to earn that loyalty, but he was glad these soldiers, these friends, were his.

Schott bowed his head as his men left the room, mind filled with the events of that week, and the ghosts he would always carry with him, for better or worse. A weight lifted from him. The crack that had become a chasm inside him was still there, but now that he had faced it, he could see that it had an end. And somewhere, on another world, a very different world from his own, another Winslow Schott was living a very different life, and in it were friends and laughter.

Looking around at his base, his center of command, Schott realized he was not envious of the other version of him. J'onn was back. Ray and Leo had returned home, if perhaps only for a time. He had a new friend and confidant in Nadiir. And Catherine was around somewhere, ordering his men about, probably pestering the doctors in the infirmary. He had good soldiers, good friends. He had home, maybe a little bit of peace.

And finally, after all this time, and thanks in large part to the visitors from Earth One, General Schott had hope.

fin.


End file.
